13 Jan 2026 · 6 min
Steve Lichtman argues that authentic human content beats generic AI slop. He uses AI for specific tasks like vocal cleaning and image generation, but relies on his own voice for what matters: funny emails about the Knicks, crude drawings, occasional curse words. Real grip comes from being imperfect and unapologetically yourself.
We talked about this a few episodes ago and it's about AI and AI content and the algorithm sometimes even favoring AI because the algorithm loves volume. But at the end of the day, people, people love things that are real. And look, it could be anything. It could be an off the cuff story from your life that'll smoke a dozen AI 10 times your growth carousel posts. I mean, how many of you seen of that today? How many lead gen content posts have you seen in the last 24 hours promising you with our tool we will create for you massive lead gen opportunities. Look, I've got an email that seems to grab all of those. It's a throwaway I've been using for years. I'm signed on to every list from every heavy hitter and every small hitter on the planet. It gets hundreds of emails a day. If I told you that the ebb and flow was leaning towards auto generated or minimally invested AI content, just promoting lead gen and promoting getting in front of people, promoting AI call bots, promoting all this slop. Just this. Look, we all look at things a little bit differently. I'm not anti AI. Look, I use AI even for this podcast to clean up the vocals because it's a lot easier than spending hour audio engineering a seven minute or six minute audio clip. So sure, I run it through an AI voice cleaner. It doesn't change the words that I'm saying, it doesn't change my voice, it doesn't change my tone, it cleans up my lisp and it maybe takes away some of the vocal pops and normalizes my volume because I am energetic and I move around while I'm talking and making these. I can't just sit still so I'm moving and there's fluctuations. AI can be a wonderful tool in many things and even in music. People are arguing these days about the Suno app and how AI is destroying the music business. The reality is it's an amazing tool for stem separation for anybody who actually does like work in a daw and is into the audio world for stem separation. It's a fantastic tool. Not going to write a rock album with it though, because it's going to sound pedestrian and every song's going to sound the same and they really do. And look, I'm a SUNO user just because I was curious. I was making joke stuff about the Knicks players. I was literally making making dozens of songs,'80s rock style songs about the Knicks that were making me and my family crack up and laugh. I usually do it during the games when they're winning when they're losing, I'm throwing things at the wall like the last couple of last four games. But that's neither here nor there. When this post, it might be more. The streak might be snapped. Let's hope end of the day, AI is always going to be here at this point. So you have to take the human element of yourself and start promoting that more. You know, you want to take a voice note from the car. That's gold. You know, stutter, laugh, drop a curse word if it fits. That's the stuff that's going to stick every time. Something that feels real, something that feels human. The lazy AI is just flooding our feed constantly with that soulless slop, right? I yell it out at my computer all the time. I'll scroll through LinkedIn and see like five in a row and be like, oh, man, f me. Can't they eat? Just stop. The real way to win and for you to win is by being unapologetically you. And that's something I've been saying for years, literally. Was that the hero text on my website for four years? Be unapologetically you. Imperfections and all, right? Your imperfections are what makes you unique. It's what makes you somebody to listen to. It makes you something that has a grip or a grab to it. You know, it's easy to mail it in. It's easy to use ChatGPT and Gemini and Claude and Grok and Nano Banana and all these things. But how many Nano Banana images have you seen online? I use it for episode images for the website and screwing around. That's pretty much it. I'm not gonna rely on it. Heavy. I actually drew a hilarious. I drew it in Procreate on my iPad, like a stick figure colored in type of something a kid would do in grade school for New year's with a 2026 and a boat with a fish hook and some crappy fish drawing around. Yeah, you know, it was. It was absolute garbage, the image. But I made it because I thought it was funny. I was sitting on my couch, I made it the day before, and I was like, I'll post this on New Year's, and that was that. So, look, the riff of the day about AI and about you being you as a person is that robots can write words, but humans drop truth bombs every time. You've got a, you know, as they call like a microphone moment, a pipe bomb moment with the microphone, and you see, they drop the mic. Those moments are always human. You can't manufacture those with AI. In a way that's really going to move people and shake them to their core. They might say, oh, yeah, nice, bro, good. But you're never going to move anybody, you're never going to affect change in anybody, and you're never going to make a difference if all you do Is rely on AI. Especially if it's just a generic AI like a ChatGPT and you're not leveraging something like a digital mind where you're feeding it thousands of lines and millions of words of content of your own. If you're doing that, we could argue it a little more, but when you're just literally mailing it in, it's just not it. The AI is just not going to be that type of thing where you're going to get a massive reaction and, and really change things up. So, look, that's it for today. I totally forgot to do the riff of the day. You know, it's not even on my notes screen here. Hilariously enough, I. I completely omitted to ride the riff of the day, so I'm going to make one up as we go. The riff of the day is real simple. Don't rely on AI, Rely on the person that you see in the mirror. And with that, I will leave you. Today was another episode of Unfiltered and Unshakable. I'm Steve Lichtman and just thank you for being here.
